


on gold, and the wearing of red

by batshape



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, and as always when i write about first age noldor: teeth, appearances from curufin and amrod and amras as well, digressions on first age fashion and body modification, fake academic texts, the Long Peace, the inherent vanity of being feanorian, the lord of himring is much admired and he sure does know it, this is indulgent both in form and in content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:08:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27181588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batshape/pseuds/batshape
Summary: “The teeth are a bit much,” he remarked, after a brief stretch of silence. “The filing, more so than the gold—I would prefer that fashion remained here, if it must continue at all."-on trends of the first age, and the allegiances which came with them
Relationships: Caranthir | Morifinwë & Maedhros | Maitimo
Comments: 13
Kudos: 56





	on gold, and the wearing of red

_Dress among the Noldor of the first age was as indicative of political allegiance as it was of geographical location and rank. Most striking of the affections of First Age Noldorin warriors was undoubtedly those adopted by Fëanorian loyalists in the five centuries before the fall of Menegroth, as has been made evident in archaeological discovery as well as modern testament given by survivors of the War of the Jewels._

_Personal decoration among the Noldor of the First Age clung to two main principles: the jingoistic display of house colors and heraldic devices even in times of relative quiet (such as that of the Long Peace), and the boasting of one’s own house’s metallurgical craftsmanship whenever possible. Reference has previously been made in this text to the use of beetles in the production of red dye; following the first proper decade of the First Age, new red clothing became an uncommon luxury, given the material cost and laborious effort of producing the dye and creating long-lasting red garments in the colder regions of the east. In particular, a culture of differing personal decoration developed after the scattering of the seven sons of Fëanor to eastern Beleriand, including but not limited to the display of jewels and precious metals (tellingly, much more accessible among the Noldor than red dye in the first century of the First Age) in one’s teeth and in prosthetic replacements of lost digits and limbs, the cropping of one’s hair, and the filing of canines and blunted front teeth to sharper points._

_This rash of dramatic personal modification can be attributed, as many cultural changes among the Fëanorian camp were, to the capture and imprisonment of the briefly reigning High King of the Noldor (r. YT 1497 - FA 7) Maedhros Fëanorion in Angband. Following the first son of Fëanor’s abdication to his kinsman High King Fingolfin (r. FA 7 - FA 455), clannish loyalties between Fëanor’s followers and other royal Exiles began to demonstrate themselves in personal aesthetic modifications, most often mimicking the personal affectations of Maedhros Fëanorion himself._

_Though archaeological evidence remains scarce—obviously, and most frustratingly, due to the majority of Beleriand’s current location underwater, though the rarity can also be credited to the early Fëanorian practice of burning their dead in fires hot enough to reduce bone to complete ash and melt dental crowns made from even hard metals—written records preserve some of the process, reasoning, and frequency of these personal aesthetic modifications._

— excerpt from _Identity and Bodily Modification of the First Age_ (TA 1205), obtained with permission from the library of Imladris in TA 3001

:

In Mithrim, they had cut their hair short, and Caranthir had thought little of it then.

His eldest brother had returned from the iron fortress with ruined hair numbering among his other injuries, and at Maedhros’ request and with Caranthir’s knife, Amrod had sheared it all off.

It was a strange decision—though their father had worn his hair short in Formenos, it had still nearly brushed his shoulders at its most sensational—and it was whispered among the Noldor who did not look upon the Fëanorians fondly that it was the behavior of thralls. The enemy, they murmured, cut the hair of his captured, and to do so was an affront to the very integrity of the Noldorin war effort. To do so was proof in itself that Caranthir’s brother had come back changed.

But most of those who had been loyal to Fëanor were loyal now to Maedhros, and they cut with him their hair.

Shortly before they left Mithrim, Caranthir had braced the flat of his hand against the curve of his skull and lifted his hair from the back of his neck, considering the possibility of a haircut of his own in a looking glass. More and more frequently, he had seen Noldor with their hair cropped above their shoulders, just below their ears, shorn up the backs and the sides of their skulls—though very few cut as close as Maedhros had and freed themselves of it all—and he had debated the change himself.

Meanwhile, Celegorm had delighted in the opportunity to wield a razor so close to his brothers’ throats and had quickly embraced the new breadth of styles wholeheartedly. And when Amras had at last allowed his hair to be slashed beneath his ears and shorn further up the left side, Amrod had required little more convincing to do the same. As the High King’s regent, Maglor had forgone the style, though while packing his things for their leaving Fingolfin’s new lands, he had tied up his heavy dark hair, and Caranthir had witnessed the shorn underside of it.

But Caranthir, despite his frequency before a looking glass in that uncertain time in Mithrim, had kept his hair long among his brothers and his cousins alike. Only in Thargelion had he at last taken a knife to it, right at the line of his jaw, and found immediately that he missed the weight. He declined to host any of his kin until he had grown it past his shoulders again, but he suspected by some pointless espionage of his brothers in Himlad that his brief affair with the fads of the rest of the Fëanorian camp had not gone unnoticed and unrecorded. 

At the least, when he saw Curufin again, hair cropped above his shoulders and adorned with enough shining clasps that he resembled their father in a way which was most insufferably intentional, his younger brother tilted his head and smiled knowingly.

“Not for you?” Curufin suggested, and Caranthir scowled. Curufin looked indulgently sympathetic. “I suppose it is not. I imagine it would make your face look terribly round.”

A troupe of Thargelion’s messengers returned from his eldest brother’s domain with gold plating on their sharpest teeth, and long having intended to pay his brother in the cold north a visit (for his ledger’s purposes if not for anything else), Caranthir had his horse saddled and a party gathered and rode to Himring himself.

By Caranthir’s most charitable summations, winter in Himring was nigh unlivable, and his eyelashes froze long before he arrived in Maedhros’ company. He was in an ill mood then, and he had never been fond of embraces (a distaste which he and Maedhros shared now, and a common ground on which Caranthir could be comfortable in his eldest brother’s presence), and he only shook the wet snow from his shoulders before he spoke.

“My messengers wear gold in their mouths,” he said curtly, and his brother flashed him a brief smile. The gold of Maedhros’ own teeth shone in firelight.

“Many appear to be losing their teeth in Himring,” he observed wisely. “Your messengers are not the only ones.”

“Perhaps you should control that,” said Caranthir, shedding his furs. The laces of his boots were frozen, and so irritably he left them alone. “Impose a ban on fighting, unless it be with orcs or wolves—”

“Have you brought me news, or wine, or is this visit only to advise me on how to dictate the personal decoration adopted by your own soldiers?” Caranthir spread his discarded outer layers before his brother’s fire and scowled. Maedhros, having seated himself in the wide chair closest to the hearth, tipped his head.

“Must I do it all at once? At least allow me a moment to thaw.” Caranthir had indeed brought with him a few cases of wine, having promised it in his last correspondence to Himring, though he did not appreciate being rushed. He also tilted his head, though to the opposing side. He sat. “You look well.”

“You look wet.” The frost which had stiffened even his inner sleeves had melted in its brief proximity to the fire, and Caranthir had begun to drip icy water onto the cabinet’s carpets. Maedhros nodded. “And well too, I suppose.”

Caranthir sniffed. “Amusing,” he said, though he found it distinctly not. “This climate suits you.”

“Anything suits me,” agreed Maedhros simply, and Caranthir narrowed his eyes.

“Yes,” he said, leaning forward in his chair. “About that—”

“I was promised wine, Moryo,” interrupted his eldest brother, and there was an edge of smugness to the turn of his mouth. His replaced canines—longer and sharper than what was typical of the Eldar, to match the rest of his lengthened teeth—caught gently on the curve of his lower lip. “Am I not to receive it?”

Caranthir scowled. The laces of his boots had thawed, and he spilled cold water from his sleeves and his boots and the ends of his dark hair as he stood, and went to collect the wine.

:

If he would not admit to finding anything else about the visit enjoyable, at the least he drank well in Himring. And he spent much time in his brother’s company.

Gold-plated canines, he found, were common in the domain of Maedhros—nearly as common as shorn hair—and Caranthir espied other affectations of his eldest brother in the forces on the eastern march. Demeanors were hard but rarely totally grim, even as many seemed to have foregone their bright red cloaks and crimson-dyed leathers for those in deep browns and sables and gold, in a way that appeared less influenced by the availability of textile dyes and more influenced by the colors favored by his brother. A more fanatical company of the March’s scouts also seemed to have taken up the filing of their teeth to more pronounced points, though when Caranthir raised this topic with Maedhros he received no acknowledgement beyond a steady yellow gaze and a very slow blink.

His brother was greatly adored, and he knew it, and it frustrated Caranthir most perhaps that he would not admit it. In Maedhros’ cabinet before a small fire, quite tipsy already on Dorwinion wine, Caranthir expressed this frustration.

“I think,” said he, gesturing at his brother somewhat clumsily with his cup, “that it is only some time before they all begin to _dye_ their hair as well as cut it.”

Maedhros tipped his head, and the marginally satisfied angle to his mouth returned. He, too, was approaching intoxication, though Caranthir knew from the heat of his own face and the heaviness of his words that he was showing it more so than Maedhros. Previously his brother had removed the lightweight metallic prosthesis from his right forearm and set it upon the fireplace mantle beside a gold-plated skeletal mandible that, judging by its lengthened teeth, was most likely of orcish origin (but was perhaps not), and drank from his own cup contemplatively. His silence in the action was most telling: before arriving in Beleriand, Maedhros had become a rather untalented poet whenever drunk, but now he was typically only very quiet.

“I do not know where anyone in Himring would acquire the dyes to do such a thing,” began Maedhros with his slight smile. “Unless you have happened upon a market for the stuff, and this is your way of pitching the trade—”

“No,” said Caranthir irritably, and drank again. “Though if I ever do, perhaps I will obtain some just for you, to remedy this—” And he gestured vaguely at his own hair, though he meant that of his brother’s, gone silver at the temples and behind his torn ears since he had returned from the cliff so many years ago. Maedhros raised a brow.

“I’ve grown fond of the grey, actually,” said he with some amusement. “So I must respectfully decline.”

Caranthir frowned. “I suppose it suits you,” he allowed begrudgingly. Maedhros nodded.

“As do most things,” he agreed once again, mostly unseriously. Caranthir snorted.

“Ass,” he declared, and refilled his own cup. He tipped the bottle in his brother’s direction, and Maedhros also offered his cup to be filled. “You know they are all enamored with you.”

His brother lifted his left shoulder in a careful shrug. “They are only bored,” he said. “Winters in Himring are not particularly exciting, unless you are one of those who delight endlessly in the killing of Angband’s scrawnier wolves.”

“Nelyo.” It was a flat invocation of his name, and it made Maedhros meet his gaze. “You are a poor hand at humility.”

“Well.” Maedhros shared with him a flickery, tipsy grin. “Perhaps they are bored most of the time.”

Caranthir snorted. He lifted his cup in a half-amused toast, and Maedhros drank with him. Caranthir tugged at his collar, having grown warm.

“The teeth are a bit much,” he remarked, after a brief stretch of silence. “The filing, more so than the gold—I would prefer that fashion remained here, if it must continue at all.”

“You are welcome to try and stop it.” Maedhros shrugged. “I have not wasted the energy.”

“Because you are vain,” Caranthir accused.

“Because I am busy.” Again, a shrug. A smile which pulled pale the scars splitting his lips, showed his own long teeth. “I am hardly vain nowadays.”

Caranthir appraised him shrewdly. “Liar,” he said, and his brother only inclined his head. In the dying firelight, his eyes glinted yellow rather than silver.

“Liar,” Caranthir repeated flatly. “Though I don’t care that you are vain, Nelyo. I am only thinking practically, that if we start sending out envoys with hand-filed fangs, that cooperation with any force outside of Hithlum is going to become very difficult for us. We are called monstrous enough already, though I maintain that _that_ is less my fault than it is anyone else’s—”

“Moryo,” interrupted Maedhros with amusement. “Are _you_ lecturing _me_ on diplomacy?”

“I am only thinking _politically—”_

“Not your strong suit,” mused Maedhros, and held out his cup again to be refilled. Caranthir complied. “Nor is this the conversation I think either of us want to be having here in the dead of night.” 

Caranthir conceded. It was, in fact, not the conversation he wished to be having. He cared for talk of diplomacy about as much as he cared for managing the affairs of Thargelion without the immediate supervision of his wiser eldest brother: that was, mostly not at all. Furthermore, Caranthir had just felt himself tip from the precipice of gentle tipsiness into drunkenness, and he wanted not at all for political discussion anymore.

His cheeks were very warm. Caranthir wedged the heel of his palm hard against his lower jaw and frowned.

“I won’t cut my hair,” he muttered. “I tried it, and did not like it. Not that I wish to agree with Curvo, but my face may simply be too round for it.”

“Mhm.” The amusement in the sound was evident. Maedhros forewent his full cup, instead leaning across the little table between them and liberating Caranthir of the open bottle of wine. Maedhros shifted in his seat, casting his long legs over the right arm of the chair, and tipped the bottle to his own mouth.

Caranthir scrubbed a hand down his face. Quietly, roughly, he confessed, “I don’t hate the gold. Actually, I nearly like it.”

More amusement. Maedhros said, almost sweetly, “Thank you, Moryo.”

“I don’t mean on _you.”_ Of course, the gold was agreeable on Maedhros. Everything suited him, particularly now that looking upon Caranthir’s brother’s face inspired awe of two kinds, as tinged with respectful fear as it was with personal adoration. Caranthir felt his mouth twist. “Maitimo.”

Maedhros dipped his head. “Of course not,” said he, with little concern for hiding his enjoyment of the shifted conversation topic now. “You are considering it then?”

“I did not say that.” But Caranthir pressed his palm to his cheek roughly, and envisioned the glint of metal in his own mouth. He wondered, briefly enough to avoid the sullen tragedy of the thought, if their father would have found the trend dramatic enough to indulge in it himself. “Perhaps.”

Maedhros hummed. He said mildly, “I will owe the twins a warhorse apiece if you do.”

Caranthir’s mouth tore. “You’ve _bet_ on it?” Scandalized, he dragged a hand again down his own face. “With the _Ambarussat?”_

His eldest brother shrugged. “Telvo writes often, for love and not his ledgers.” At this, Caranthir snapped together his teeth. “We have wagers on many things, though he and Pityo have suffered a rash of losses lately, betting on your dress sense.”

 _“Dress sense,”_ snarled Caranthir, though he was too drunk to be truly angry. “Bastards.”

“Harmless pastimes.” Maedhros imparted to him a lazy, long-toothed smile. “I suppose it is breaking the unspoken rules of the wager, but if you are of the opinion that our youngest brothers are deserving of two of my handsomest horses—”

Caranthir cursed him vehemently, though without true vitriol. “You deserve to lose them, most certainly.”

“Ah.” His brother angled the bottle of wine to lean on his chest and turned out his palm. “So you will do it.”

“Vulture.” Caranthir scowled. “Have you wagered your fortress on the cutting of my hair too?”

Maedhros tapped the nails of his four remaining fingers on the bottle contemplatively. “No,” he said simply. “I like your hair long.”

“But it must be known that I am Fëanorian somehow,” suggested Caranthir sullenly, and his brother laughed.

“There is no mistaking you for anything else, Moryo.” Caranthir had to admit that this was true. He might not physically resemble Fëanor the most out of his brothers (this was an honor awarded to Curufin, of course, and damn him for not letting anyone else forget it), but his demeanor was unmistakably that of their father. Maedhros only gestured at him vaguely. “I simply think the gold would suit you.”

“I am not nearly as vain as you, Nelyo,” Caranthir condemned, though he wondered. The more he thought of it, the more he did like the idea of the gold. It would suit his complexion. It might distract from the roundness of his face.

Maedhros tilted back his head and regarded him evenly from his sideways position in the chair. Caranthir did not fidget. “You are a Noldo, Moryo,” Maedhros said mildly. “I find an absence of vanity difficult to believe.”

Caranthir imparted to him a rude gesture, though he did not argue the point. He merely finished his wine.

:

Caranthir wore gold in his mouth. Shortly after his return to Thargelion, Amrod and Amras sent him correspondence thanking Caranthir for their two glossy new warhorses, and Caranthir dictated in his response exactly what kind of faithless scavengers he thought them.

The dwarves of the Blue Mountains also delighted in the decoration, asking many less-than-professionally prodding questions as to the intent of such a thing. Caranthir endured numerous conversations regarding the topic, even one from a dwarrowdam scholar who enquired rather delightedly about the integrity and longevity of elven canines (“Do you lose them every hundred years?” she had asked excitedly from across the dinner table, and Caranthir had choked), before he had the sense to concoct a more succinct and diplomatic response.

“It is only a personal affectation,” he said then, to those who asked, “largely practical for others of my house, though I have not personally lost my sharper teeth to the tearing of throats with them.” Then, when that seemed to generate more scholarly excitement among his various hosts than not, he abridged it further. “It is a bit like the wearing of red.”

It was not quite a perfect analogy—if he wore red for only Maedhros, and not for any other member of his house, perhaps it would have been—but it was suitable enough. He did not feel any great need to elaborate on the loyalty felt for his once beautiful and still noble (and still vain) eldest brother to Thargelion’s trading partners. Nor did he feel an obligation to reveal the secret joy it gave him, to sneer with gold-capped teeth and watch captured raiders of the enemy realize that not only was he Noldo but he was Fëanorian, and he would bring retribution.

These were private cares, personal thrills, and they were very _Maedhros_ of him. When Caranthir first realized this, having paused before a mirror to reaffix the eight-pointed star clasp of his cloak, to admire the glint of his teeth, he scowled. He looked a bit more like his brother then, and he pulled the fur of his collar closer about his face.

He sent a single case of wine, selected from his own personal stores, with the next envoy from Thargelion to Himring, for the use of his eldest brother. He did not cut his hair, but when the spring came and trade with Thargelion was at last coaxed out of the Laiquendi in Ossiriand, Caranthir sought personally to reinvigorate the wearing of red in the hosts of his own and of his brothers.

It was not quite a perfect demonstration of affection, but Caranthir could show love and loyalty in bolts of red and cases of wine better than he could in words or embraces. And his brothers evidently appreciated the recirculation of their house colors; Amrod and Amras, having that summer invited themselves without warning to Thargelion, arrived wrapped in absurd amounts of red, which Caranthir did not hesitate to remind them did the colors of their hair a great disservice.

And when Caranthir saw Maedhros once again, even he was dressed in a heavy cloak of crimson which Caranthir had himself stitched, through many hours in Thargelion with his shining metallic canines worrying his lower lip, with spiraling gold.

:

_The intersection of Fëanorian self-modification with the trends of other houses of men, elves, and dwarves has indeed become a popular argument for historians seeking to provide a “view of that particular familial line that does not condemn with its well-known atrocities the house’s great influence on various aspects of First Age diplomacy, technological advancement, and war strategy.”_

_While some of these attempts to redeem Fëanorian politics between the First Kinslaying and the Second have been discredited for alleged “gratuitous revisionism,” and taking into account that the cutting of one’s hair was not solely a Fëanorian indicator—cropped hair among Doriathrin Sindar after the fall of Menegroth became a hallmark of those who would remember Lúthien, and furthermore defended her line’s claim to the Silmaril which she had cut from the Iron Crown—early exchange of ideas and trends between clans does speak to a more positive, cooperative Fëanorian presence in Beleriand than some purport. In personal recordings dated previous to the dissolution of the Long Peace, which survive in the library of Imladris in the care of its lord Elrond Peredhel, the lord of Himring writes to his brother Maglor Fëanorion that “Findekáno [Fingon Ñolofinwëan, r. FA 456 - FA 472] has also taken up the wearing of gold on his teeth as much as in his hair, which I can only assume will spark yet another bloody diplomatic incident with our lineage at its crux” (Compiled Letters of Maitimo Nelyafinwë, Lord of Himring, FA 150 - FA 472)._

_As no record survives of the anticipated violent diplomatic incident in question, we can assume the latter half of this comment was made largely in jest._

— excerpt from _Identity and Bodily Modification of the First Age_ (TA 1205), obtained with permission from the library of Imladris in TA 3001

**Author's Note:**

> i've been doing a lot of schoolwork on prehistoric european grave hoards lately. this is, somewhat, the result of that.
> 
> i tend to imagine that (post-thangorodrim) maedhros and caranthir were the prickliest of their siblings, though in completely different ways. i think, in the earlier half of the first age, they probably got on well (largely, perhaps, because of a mutual respect of boundaries), and i wanted to write something about their relationship specifically.
> 
> you can find me on tumblr at batshape.tumbr.com!


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